I’ve been trying to recreate that old look that old school RuneScape has with my current game project but can’t quite get there. I’m fairly new to using unreal and don’t really know how to get much further so some help would be appreciated.
That look is mostly about what you take away, not what you add. A few things that get you close to old-school RuneScape in UE 5.8:
Textures: on every texture set Filter to Nearest, Mip Gen Settings to NoMipmaps (or Texture Group “2D Pixels (unfiltered)”), and keep them tiny (64x64 or 128x128). Also set the sampler in the material to match the texture. This gives the crunchy, unblurred texels.
Flat shading: use Vertex Color for the base tint, a low-poly mesh with hard edges (flat normals), and keep roughness at 1 and specular at 0. Shading in the original is basically baked-looking vertex lighting.
Lighting: one Directional Light with no shadows or a single soft shadow, plus a bright Skylight. Turn Lumen off (Project Settings > Rendering > Dynamic Global Illumination = None, Reflections = None) and use Anti-Aliasing = None or FXAA so edges stay sharp.
Resolution: lower r.ScreenPercentage (e.g. 50 to 66) with upscaling, or use a Post Process material that snaps UVs (floor(ScreenUV * Res) / Res) for the chunky pixel feel.
Camera and fog: a narrow FOV, a high-angle camera, and Exponential Height Fog with a short, flat distance for the draw-distance look. Bump saturation slightly in Post Process Volume.
If you post a screenshot of the target next to yours, it’s easier to tell which of these is the main gap.